GTA 5 was delayed for quite some time iirc, and it turned out to be excellent, personally I wish more studios would take that bit longer to make sure their games were as close to the standard that their hype implies.

We're only here for the Banter - The Luvvies - Chewin' The Fat

Violence and Lubrication is the solution to fixing everything, if it still doesn't work, you need more lubrication.

GTA 5 was delayed for quite some time iirc, and it turned out to be excellent, personally I wish more studios would take that bit longer to make sure their games were as close to the standard that their hype implies.

I'm very happy with this. I wish they'd do it more often. Between the pressure of Q4 releases or, in the case of AC3, an actual pre-determined deadline written years before into the story's fiction, their games often suffer unnecessarily. I'm really pleased to see Ubisoft backing off from that, especially because this is a game I hope I'm going to love.

Sensible as a delay, but bloody annoying for those of us that got a nice email from Amazon last Friday telling us about the new bundles...was a great bundle for Watchdogs.

Now had to switch to Killzone instead which is a big shame as I would have rather picked that up used down the line (and I now have to go back and finish KZ3 hah). The bundles still make sense because of the second controller (makes the game cost about £10) but still, frustrating!

Only other bundles are fifa, NFS or Battlefield 4 (why would anyone buy that on a console), so nothing interesting.

Still, should make for a better game early next year so can't complain too much!

I got a different impression from this announcement, that ubi aren't financially sound as they'd like to be, but have at least got the business sense to sort it out.
Their recent releases; Splinter Cell, Rayman, Just Dance, didn't have the impact they wanted, and the move of the UK release for Black Flag, I think adds weight. AC having been pencilled to share a release with BF4 was never really going to happen, so Ubi and EA got into a game of chicken to see who would flinch (a stupid move to try and face off the fat, dumb, over financed monstrosity of EA) A bad decision to have to alter a release date, but given the circumstances, changing from 1st Nov to 30th Oct is the best move, getting it out before BF and CoD.
As for Watch Dogs, the number of demos and videos at E3 that looked so much more polished than demos for other games still being released before xmas, suggests to me that it was damn near finished by the end of summer and the reasons for it's delay are more economic.
How many people are going to miss out on their preferred next gen, as demand outstrips supply? How many other huge releases are coming out in the next 2 month period? Compare that to spring next year, people who want the One or PS4, will more likely have it by then, they'll have completed/got bored of the glut of games released in the end of this year, they'll have paid off the debts of xmas so can afford it, and how many other big titles come out in spring?
As long as Ubi keep the expectation up, I don't think it truly matters, it'll be a good game and it proves they are a better company than the likes of EA